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Atheists Freak Out Over Street Honoring 9/11 Victims

Atheists Freak Out Over Street Honoring 9/11 Victims

Question… If you say “go to hell” to an atheist, does it have the same punch? I’m just wondering, because that is what I’d like to say to the collection of atheists who are protesting a street sign in New York City. The street sign was set up to honor seven firefighters who lost their lives on September 11, 2001. The name of the street is “Seven in Heaven Way.”

The Christian Post reports that a “group of New York atheists claims a new street sign, “Seven in Heaven Way,” honoring seven firefighters killed during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, violates the First Amendment and should be removed.”

American Atheists is demanding the sign be removed from Richards Street in Brooklyn because it advances the religious notions of the afterlife. David Silverman president of American Atheists said in a statement, “It’s improper for the city to endorse the view that heaven exists. It links Christianity and heroism.”

Another member of the group, Ken Bronstein, pointed out that, “The problem with the sign is that you’re assuming that you know what they felt deep down. You’re assuming they even believed in heaven.” Bronstein told Fox News Radio that the sign was “really insulting to us.” He added, “It’s irrelevant who it’s for. We think this is a very bad thing,”

Craig Hammerman, who is the district manager for the local community board in Brooklyn, notes that “there was no complaint during the approval process for the sign.” Perhaps there just wasn’t a big enough potential for media coverage at that stage??? Who knows.

The report on the Fox News web site goes more into Ken Bronstein’s comments. Bronstein runs the New York City Atheists and said, “There should be no signage or displays of religious nature in the public domain.” Bronstein added, “We’ve concluded as atheists there is no heaven and there’s no hell.”

This ranks right up there with all the other useless, time-wasting endeavors that usually result in 1) the majority (Christian) viewpoint being ignored or silenced and 2) a big waste of money in fighting legal battles.

A scan of the American Atheists web site is quite revealing, and it shows a group that is just so angry that they will say just about anything. As an example, take a look at the press release that was issued on May 3 which called for an end to government prayer.

One of the targets of the press release is Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley. What was his crime? In the midst of devastating tornadoes and other serious weather, Gov. Bentley asked people to pray. Wow, imagine that!

“It’s bad enough that leading politicians are acting like superstitious, bronze-age tribal chiefs trying to appease some imagination rain god or other deity,” said Dave Silverman, President of American Atheists. “They add insult to injury by telling American citizens when to pray and how to pray. They engage in blatant unconstitutional promotion of religion.”

Blair Scott, Communications Director for American Atheists, asked: “Shouldn’t these governors be placing more emphasis on sensible emergency preparedness, and spend less time using their office for sermonizing and staging prayer services?”

“Early warning systems, good communications, better building codes and even taking steps to attenuate global warming will do more to save lives than all of the prayers these politicians can muster,” added Scott.

My question to Mr. Scott is this: Don’t you think the governors are doing exactly what you said? Do you really think they aren’t doing everything they can within their powers of office to have their states prepared for an emergency? How does Mr. Scott know that more “emphasis” is being placed on prayer?

We live in a crazy world… a world that is sometimes overwhelming. What is wrong with turning to prayer in times of need? To people like Silverman and Scott, apparently everything.

Dear Atheists,
C’mon, it’s JUST a street-sign! Why get your dander up? Why is it so harsh to you? Do you protest the murder of innocent fetuses who may be atheists someday? You should! Perhaps you wouldst go to a bookstore and insist that they cover the word “BIBLE” in that section of books!
Maybe we should put tarps over all the Crosses in our graveyards so you won’t get your panties in a wad? Gag me with a shovel.
Why would you give a rat’s patootie about a sign? Boggles the mind, it does!
As Christians know, Christ gave us a command that we’ve got to obey – to go out and spread the Good News! Those who won’t listen have that right, using the Free-Will bestowed upon us by God! AND, spreading the GOOD NEWS is NOT shoving it down your throat, of course.
As for me, I’ll keep praying for your soul and shan’t burden you with arguments or directives.
May His Mercy be on you, now and on Judgement Day! We’ll both need it.

The First Amendment does NOT prohibit prayer in the pubic sector,, as atheists and the ACLU would have you believe. In fact, our Founders and Founding Documents use God, God-given rights, etc several times over. Prayer in our government has been around a very very long time. It is o.k. for a Governor, President, or whatever to ask his constituents for prayer. If you’re an atheist, just do what you do with all the miracles that surround you every day and ignore it. No harm done. Don’t try to force YOUR atheism on me! If you don’t like “Seven in Heaven Way”, call it by the old name, or take another street. I really don’t care. In fact, I move that in order not to be hypocrites, atheists not celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in any way (get another excuse to get drunk), and please move out of San Diego (that “San” is Spanish for “Saint”), San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Antonio. St. Loiuis, Los Cruces (the Cross), etc. Just do me a favor and don’t all come to New York!

I grow weary of people distorting the meaning of the first amendment to read it as prohibiting religious expression in the public arena. This is clearly not what the founders intended.

On the other hand, it is not clear who is paying for this committee to come up with a street sign, and who is paying for the sign itself. If it is the taxpayer, I think the atheists, and any concerned citizens, have a legitimate beef. The wasting of taxpayer money on frivolous items frustrates me too. As such, it is a budgetry issue, that should be brought up with the local council (or whoever). If it was paid for by private money (e.g. Firefighters Union) there is no grounds for complaint.

Since believing in man-made global warming requires a certain amount of faith, can we claim it is a religion? That way we can use the First Amendment to stop the government from promoting it as Absolute Truth.

I’m an atheist and I agree with you that the Constitution does’t mean that people can’t conduct religious expression in public, even really offensive and obnoxious ones, which this doesn’t sound like what was happening in this case.
You are right about the whole global warming thing being a religious faith. That’s exactly what it is (and its sacraments include things like pointless and wasteful recycling, using crappy light bulbs and umm…crappy toilets). I don’t think that you can stop people from believing in those kinds of silly things either, but I do think it’s inappropriate for public schools to be preaching that kind of thing using public funds.

Michael Salop,
I wouldn’t drag you to my church, but I would invite you. 😉 Christ commanded us to compel others to come. The Bible tells us that the Son must be lifted up that He might draw all men unto Him. If Christians live as Christ lived, then others will thirst for what we have. There would be no need to force people in the door, they’d be knocking it down wanting to get in!

The important thing is that the First Amendment doesn’t apply to New York City. If you recall, the first amendment begins “CONGRESS shall make no law . . .” So the First Amendment, as written only limits Congress.

The courts have interpreted that some of the limits on government power from the Constitution apply to the states and local governments too. It’s a concept called “incorporation” ()http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_Rights). I’m not entirely comfortable with the legal reasoning there, but the general idea is right…the point of the American form of government is to defend the individual rights of individuals and it makes no sense for the federal government to defend those rights against foreign invaders, organized criminals, and so on but to allow states and localities to do otherwise. That said, I think it would be more legally proper for this to be accomplished in the law by means of a constitutional amendment (which I am sure would pass overwhelmingly) rather than through the usual “living constitution” shenanigans.

These people protesting a street name should really seriously think about getting professional help, or maybe A JOB!!! I hope the name stays and I hope it irritates the heck out of them!! For some reason, they are afraid of anything religious, but you can bet when they know they are dying, they’ll be begging for God to accept them!! I think we should ignore this whole incident, and concentrate on something worthwhile, like how to get rid of the morons in the WH in Nov 2012!!!!

There are plenty of us atheists who hate the leftist regime in Washington as much as the rest of you do. Most of us just don’t feel the need to tattoo it on our foreheads and shout at anybody who doesn’t share our views on religion.

so, i’m confused…the religious folks have representatives who declare their affiliation openly and hold the majority of the seats in the congress – yet they still aren’t doing things the ‘right’ way…if, even with the majority, things can’t be done the ‘right’ way – hmmm….

As a republican and an atheist,(yes, it is possible to be both!) I can tell you that naming anything with a “religious” connotation, bothers me not at all. Heaven, hell, jesus, eden etc, don’t have any meaning whatsoever, they are just words. Words like any character in any fictional book. I believe that when you die, you die. Nothing more, nothing less. You cease to exist.

Therein lies the truth of the matter…most atheists are not truly atheists for exactly the reasons you have stated. If they were truly atheists, words like God, heaven, hell, Eden etc. would have no more meaning than names like Merlin, Shrek or any other presumed fictional character. Obviously I disagree with you about God’s existence, but I appreciate that you very eloquently stated the true hypocrisy of most “atheists.” You can’t say you don’t believe in God on one hand and yet go into apoplexy everytime someone brings the name or concept up on the other hand. It just doesn’t fit.

Rich: I think that there’s nothing inconsistent happening when someone says “There’s no such thing as God and the belief in God is so horrible that I get really agitated about it.” (especially in the days of religious terrorists threatening to blow us all up for example), but I think that doing so involves too much focus on a relevant but secondary issue (religion) and not enough on the primary one (being a terrorist or opposing medical treatments or whatever is bugging them). This is much like the religious folks on the other side who say “Atheists are all demons because look at what the Communists did and they are all atheists too!”. It’s the same error…focusing on an ideological point rather than whether people are decent and peaceful folks worthy of respect and cooperation or whether they are genocidal nuts. I do believe that the two can often have something to do with one another, but they are not the identical issue.

Mr S.
Respect your opinion, but I am not sure I can agree with it. I agree that many atrocities have been committed in the name of religion, but be honest. When is the last time you heard of atheists suing over a Muslim street or temple? It seems to be only when it involves the Judeo-Christian God that their hackles go up. Why? Could it be that deep inside they know Allah is a lie, and therefore no threat to them? See, I believe that for many of them (not all), their professed atheism is really a desperate attempt to deny a truth buried inside them. That is, that God really does exist, and therefore one day they really will have to face Him. They don’t feel threatened by Allah in the same way because deep inside they know that he is a false god, and not worthy of concern. That is why you almost never hear of atheists protesting anything Muslim (that and the fact that Christians don’t behead them for their opinion). I guess my point is you cannot have selective outrage about God. Either God in any form bothers you, or god doesn’t bother you. The fact that atheist outrage is almost exclusively saved for Judeo-Christian concepts or actions only makes it highly unlikely that it is simply the atrocities in the name of religion that they are objecting to, especially since Islam has shown to be far bloodier than Christianity could ever be, and atheists virtually ignore Islam.

Rich: There’s something to what you say about atheists who inordinately target Christians and Jews but not Muslims, but I don’t think it’s for the reason you think. One reason is that in a country where 98% of the religious folks are Christians of one variety or another, someone with a lot of angst about religion is going to be aiming his rhetorical guns in the direction of the biggest religious target around and not the little guys. Another reason is that in heavily Muslim countries coming out and saying you are an atheist is a death sentence so not surprisingly atheists in those places tend to stay a little more quiet (so do Christians and Jews too, though they at least have some protections as “people of the book”). A much more important (and to my way of thinking sinister) reason though is that what you are talking about is not just atheists, they are hard core leftists who are atheists too. They would join forces with ANYONE who hates the United States under the principle that “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”. If someone is blowing up our citizens and denouncing us as vile pigs then you can count on the hard left to stand up and cheer. I think that’s most of what you are seeing. Among my own atheist friends (none of whom are hard core leftists) all of them are very concerned about the jihadis and none of them take the “I’ll turn a blind eye to Islamic fanaticism but if one Christian does one little thing I am going to explode in rage.” position that you are describing (though again, I am not saying that there aren’t a whole lot of people out there like that). You just don’t hear all that much from us because we are not being obnoxious to you. I can direct you to some websites that are run by strong atheists who are also heavily focused on responding to the Islamic threat if you like.

I think that there’s another factor that explains a lot of what you are describing that is somewhat more benign. Since most of the people in the US are Christians and Jews, most atheists in this country started out as Christians or Jews or come from Christian or Jewish families. Very few come from Islamic backgrounds because very few Americans in general do. For many people, their departure from religion was either painful and difficult (with lots of conflict with family members, etc.) or painful and difficult issues with religion drove them away from religious beliefs (e.g. over the top condemnation of minor moral faults, condemnation for being gay, or who knows what). That means that a lot of atheists underwent some kind of trauma at some point in their lives related specifically to Christians or Christianity and it’s still bugging them. I think you would find the same to be true in India for Hindus or the Middle Easy for Islam.

I’m rather more even-handed in this regard myself. I think that religions are all founded on false ideas (about the supernatural etc.) and there are particular areas that do get my attention aroused (like Islamic terrorism) but overall, concerns about religious matters are not a major part of my life and I’m a lot more concerned with more important issues in life like work, family, projects, entertainment, etc. Religious issues only intrude on my life rarely and in the kinds of proportional ways that I think you are saying would be reasonable. Had atheism never come up and we met one another on some other forum where I was complaining about Islamic terrorism you probably would have no idea I was an atheist since I would be talking primarily about the terrorism and not about my own lack of agreement with them about their God. You disagree with them about their God too but would you spend a great deal of time worrying about that per se as opposed to the fact that they are interested in killing us all?

One Wild Man: I was against their building it and so were all of my atheist friends too. Here’s jsut one article by atheists taking that position…in fact, it’s a call to bomb it if it was built the first time some Jihadi made another attack: http://fvdb.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/dr-peikoff-on-the-nyc-mosque-bomb-it-out-of-existence/

Come on, we would never have allowed the Nazis to build a Nazi base in NYC during WWII would we? If so then how can we allow the same kinds of folks with the same kind of murderous desire to wipe us out to do the same thing now? The question is not whether the specific people building it with their own hands cut off Daniel Pearl’s head, it’s whether they are part of the same organization with the same goals as the people we are at war with.

RM, i thought being a christian was about having a deep and abiding faith – so, why would they NEED to have a sign to prove their devotion…i thought god/jesus was not about external proofs, rather about the soul level devotion – where actions towards others and abiding his law were the key components…

Come on, we would never have allowed the Nazis to build a Nazi base in NYC during WWII would we? If so then how can we allow the same kinds of folks with the same kind of murderous desire to wipe us out to do the same thing now? The question is not whether the specific people building it with their own hands cut off Daniel Pearl’s head, it’s whether they are part of the same organization with the same goals as the people we are at war with.

—–for this flow of thought to be logical you would have to make it a given that all muslims have this ‘murderous desire’ within them towards christians and america…that’s like saying that the Phelps speak for all christians…and i don’t think anyone is willing to say that…and also liken muslims to the nazi dogma – again, far reaching and very faulty in logic.

when have you seen a group of atheists protest the building of a church?

RM – it’s a bit arrogant to state that allah is a false god – it seems that when atheist dare to ask for ‘proof’ of your god, the claws come out as well as the biblical verses…

what creates fear in me is a tunneled vision approach to the others in our communities – locally and globally. the very respect christians seem to be demanding is due and owing to all faiths – is it not? ‘do unto others’ – is that not one of the bibles repetitive lessons?

Zellersgs: I don’t think you read what I wrote very clearly. What I said was not that every Muslim is a terrorist or supports terrorists. What I said was “The question is not whether the specific people building it with their own hands cut off Daniel Pearl’s head, it’s whether they are part of the same organization with the same goals as the people we are at war with.”. I stated the question not the answer. If in fact the people who were putting up the mosque were in fact unrelated to the organization trying to murder us then there’s no problem, just like in WWII if some Germans wanted to build a building somewhere in the US that would be fine, but if a bunch of Nazis did that would be a different matter entirely. I did not say that all Muslims are necessary part of the Jihadist movement, what I said is ****IF**** they are then they should not be allowed to build a base anywhere in the US (or anywhere else for that matter), and if they do we should blow the places up. That’s what you do in wars.

So will you persist in ignoring the condition in my comment and just assume that I mean to ignore that condition despite the fact that I said exactly the opposite merely because I didn’t take the position that we should ignore all misconduct by Muslims? Do you really think that the only two consistent points of view are “Kill all Muslims” and “Turn a blind eye to all Muslims”? It sounds like that is your unstated position.

mrsubtle, you stated you were against the building of the mosque and then paring that with your ‘question’ as to whether or not those building the mosque were cut from the same cloth as the terrorist sect responsible for the beheading and the like – i think my conclusion was a fair and reasonable one.

Christian don’t need a sign to prove their devotion. I think you know that. Just in case you are that dense the sign is there so that see it you remember those who die and how they died. I also think you purposely being malicious because you don’t like the idea that people have fate. You also resent that times of despair fate keeps people strong. When you have nothing to believing you just don’t understand.

marsubtl, I read you story and sorry if I offended you. I would like to say that this did not make it in the mainstream media and I find it strange. When every a story comes out where atheist are against some christian symbol if makes the 6 O-clock news but come out against something Muslim they don’t bother airing the story. Anyway have a good day.

OneWildMan: No worries. I know that for the most part the only time the media is paying attention to atheists is when some of them start some ridiculous fight over a creche, or a sign, seeing “In god we trust” on a penny,or saying “Merry Christmas” or something like that but we aren’t all like that. I think Christmas is great and I say “Merry Christmas” all the time (at Christmastime I mean), especially because it pisses off the leftists, and while if it were entirely up to my personal sensibilities I would not have “in god we trust” on the money, a creche in front of a public park, or signs that talk about heaven on the streets, none of those are things I am going to throw a tantrum over either. They don’t matter much and I also know I’m in the minority on those things and I knew that from the start so there’s no reason to be surprised. Once we get the government to obey the Constitution, eliminate the national debt, replace the public school system, and get lights and toilets that work properly again then we can have a nice calm conversation about whether there should be a mention of God on the penny. That’s about #874 on my list of important things to spend time complaining about at this point.

Christian don’t need a sign to prove their devotion. I think you know that. Just in case you are that dense the sign is there so that see it you remember those who die and how they died. I also think you purposely being malicious because you don’t like the idea that people have fate. You also resent that times of despair fate keeps people strong. When you have nothing to believing you just don’t understand.

RE-ELECT OBAMA NOW! ! ! !

——so, if christians don’t need an overt advertisement of their faith – what’s the resistance to changing the sign to exclude ‘heaven’ – i believe there were other honorable suggestions throughout the comments of this story…how does the sign have anything to do with ‘how’ they died? if i was to assume the answer to that, it would be that only the godly are brave? is that really what you’d like to portray?

did the city talk with the loved ones of the 7 men to determine their beliefs? what if not all of them shared the concept of heaven? it’s a bit presumptuous to assume they hold the same christian beliefs as those who petitioned for the sign.

even my own family doesn’t necessarily know what my views are as we don’t discuss religion since we each have our different viewpoints and it’s in the ‘agree to disagree’ area.

i’m assuming ‘fate’ = ‘faith’…i don’t begrudge someone their faith – i have simply not found the idea of a higher power to give me comfort in the dark and painful times in my life – and i did seek and search as i had been brought up in a family where church and god were honored. i have found that the support of friends and family who are of strong character and loyalty to be my ‘faith’ – and i’m sure you can easily attribute their existance to a loving god – and that is your faith…it just isn’t mine…they are a choice i made/make as a free thinking person. some are very religious, some not at all…but they share strength of character, honesty and loyalty…

as far as the assertion that atheists/agnostics have ‘nothing to believe in’ – again, that is simply an inability to ‘put yourself in another’s shoes’ and understand that just because i don’t believe as you do, doesn’t mean i don’t have a moral or spiritual contruct which gives me strength and guidance…

Zeller:
If you actually read the bible you reject, it says “By their fruits, ye shall know them.” If you seek evidences of external faith, just look at the number of Christian faith based organizations around the world that give their time, money and talents in disaster relief. The Southern Baptist Convention maintains a disaster relief fund, which is used solely to send disaster relief teams into areas like Jasper Alabama at home and Indonesia when it was rocked by the tsunami. No we don’t “need’ street signs to prove our faith; do you need them not to say God to prove yours?

RM, if this sign was posted in your church, in your home or in a private organization or club – no problem…however, it is not. as someone pointed out – it is being approved by, paid for and posted via the local government. GOVERNMENT…

‘reject’ the bible? it’s a quality literary document. i don’t have a problem with the bible…it shares a place on my book shelves with many other interesting books…

and, i’ve never said that christians weren’t good people who do good deeds – what i have said is that i believed that true spirituality doesn’t need the spotlight…that those doing truly unselfish and faithbased deeds don’t need to be acknowledged or need a pat on the head to prove they are worthy of their deity’s love and acceptance…that the sign is for those whom are living – just as a headstone or memorial plaque may be – to give the living a place to say ‘hi’…even in my ungodliness, i have realized that i can do that anywhere – that external reminders are nice, but it’s more important that the internal ones exist.

the main argument i see in the media is that by placing ‘heaven’ in the sign, we are putting one groups assumption as to the beliefs of those who so heroically died…do we know for sure that all that passed were of christian faith? that they all believed that a heaven existed and were even interested in getting there? so, simply based upon that – like most things done as a memorial – it is for the living and to say the atheists are dishonoring the dead by making a fuss is silly – they are gone…what they are doing is pissing off the living by challenging it.

when i die, whatever is placed upon my headstone won’t matter to me – it will be done for the peace of mind of those left behind…i get that…but it will also be a private circumstance…not paid for by public funds nor posted as a public announcement.

while, yes, it agree it’s just a sign, i don’t disagree with the reasoning behind the fuss.

Wow, look at the atheists coming out of the woodwork. I am sorry Im333, but you are intolerant. You also have a very bad understanding of the clause in the Constitution that Jefferson called the separation of church and state. It’s not religion and it’s not faith, it is church. What is a church? Well, Jefferson knew a good example of that, the Church of England, whose head is the King of England, also its secular ruler as well. He hated that. He didn’t want anyone in charge of any one faith telling everyone else what they must believe in. That’s the separation. No one tells you what you can believe and that includes YOU. You have no right to force your atheism on me and I have no right to force my theism on you. But you do have every right to proclaim you are an atheist and I have every right to proclaim I am a theist. By the way, I have a BS in physics and an MA in computer science.

By the way, Jefferson coined the term because some people were afraid that he would proclaim a federal “holiday” which at time he believed was a function of the church, not the state. We would have no federal holidays whatsoever if successive presidents adopted that strict a stance (and before him Washington had declared holidays). In fact we don’t even give the notion of a holiday a religious dimension, going even as far as to secularize religious holidays. (Seriously, I think you should be forced to work on Dec 25, I wouldn’t want to impose my religious beliefs on you, after all.)

The word “religion” refers to one’s personal convictions and proclamations about things apart from physical humanity, regardless whether they do or do not affect humans, or hold humans accountable. Christianity and all such “faiths” have their proclamations about entities apart from humans. Atheists have their own proclamations, claiming the opposite of all the rest. Any proclamations, whatever they might be, constitute the RELIGION of the person proclaiming them. Atheism is, therefore, a religion in its own right. So basically, we have simply a case of one religion, Atheism – disallowing the existence of God – versus all the rest – allowing for God or something else.
When the 1st Amendment says, in essence, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or denying the free exercise thereof”, the word “respecting” does not mean “in deference to”. In the older English of the times, “respecting” means “as regards’. In other words, Congress shall keep its mitts off of what the public chooses to believe, advocate, celebrate, or give deference to. Since the citizens own America, the Constitution compels Congress and everything else in the government to leave religions (including atheists) alone to fight out their own differences. So, if sufficient numbers of one class of religions (believers in something outside of humanity) wish to assign a street name embodying the context of their beliefs, and if they prevail in doing so, so be it.
Atheists, for their part, cannot appeal to the Constitution because it cannot oppose itself by acting to prevent the other side from practicing or giving deference to their own particular religious proclamations.
None of us gets upset over things that we consider have no power to affect us adversely. Atheists, therefore, must be assigning some power, adverse to them, if a God might actually exist. Will they somehow be called to account? Are they in for a spanking? Nothing can account for their uproar except abject fear of what God’s existence might portend for those who do not believe in him. This type of reaction actually proves what the bible says, that we all have God’s law written in our hearts – convicting us and causing us to fear the punishment for our imperfections.
Atheists, stop trembling. Do as Psalm 34:8 advises: “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the [person] who takes refuge in him.” There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m not afraid, and I’m as rotten as anybody else. There’s a reason for that. Learn it, and live it.

I have an easy fix for this separation of Church and State thing. It depends entirely on Obamacare.
Because Obamacare is manditory, so too is the patient ID system, which is a mark on your forehead.

1.) All Christians, Jews, Muslims, Bhuddists, etc, working in the medical field and on emergency response teams must wear a religious symbol on their forehead.

2.) Medical and emergency response team personnel who are religious ‘may not’ touch an injured person who does not have a religious symbol on his/her forehead. They must wait until an official atheist healthcare provider arrives to administer emergency medical care to the atheist. And the atheist cannot be taken to a religious hospital emergency room.

Of course, atheists must not give healthcare to religious people. We religious people must wait for a religious healthcare provider.

Guess who is going to wait longer?

If we religious people can no longer use public medical facilities, we can pool our money togther and create free-market medical coops. Of course, once we are denied access to secular medical faciliies, we are no longer in the Obamacare system, so we actually save money and get actual medical treatment.

Better yet, because we are now a medical coop business, we can hang up a sign that says, ‘WE maintain the right to refuse service to anyone’.

Yes. Let us take the separation of Church and State run health care to the next level, shall we. Let us honor the atheist desire to live in a religion free environment.

These people are stretching the First Amendment to cover things it was never meant to cover. It was formulated to prevent the establishment of a state religion and to allow people of any religious pursuasion to hold public office, and THAT’S ALL. In no way was it ever meant to forbid the public expression of religious beliefs.

To paraphrase a wonderful bumper sticker I once saw, if you believe there’s no God, no Heaven, and no Hell…YOU’D BETTER BE RIGHT! (last part displayed as letters of flame.)

It’s quite interesting how much griping and definition there is about the establishment clause of the first amendment, but step on someone’s path to salvation organization and all of you pseudo con-serve-atives are up in arms. You’ll happily cut tongues out so your powerless chants and cookies with juice don’t get tainted.
Atheist or not, they have the right, correction, they have the duty to challenge any government policy that may be in violation of what they interpret as their rights. They have the freedom of speech and assembly to do it with. Lying down and letting a bunch of actors in elephant suits dictate what is God and what people should accept as truth is what con-serves do.
All that these troublemakers in government had to do was come up with an honorable name that didn’t attach an imaginary place where good con-servers end up. And it is imaginary because if it wasn’t you could take me right there and show me. Instead a book written by strangers millenia ago is all you can offer. It is nothing but hearsay.
What’s wrong with ‘The Heroic 7 St’ or ‘Seven Courageous Ave.’? Instead, it HAS to be a little jab as if the God of the bible thumper were hanging around that fateful day. You’re all a bunch of pathetic hypocrites. Better have your cursed occult dollars ready for the plate this Sunday, if you don’t pay, you get the eternal fiery pit and your neighbor, who did pay enough, gets a VIP pass.
4310: U 2

Marx taught the faithful that Utopia was at hand.
No one had ever seen Utopia. But the faithful believed.
The faithful built Stalinist Russia. The faithful built Maoist China. The faithful built the workers paradise of Castro’s Cuba.
And the faithful slaughtered all of the unbelievers so that Utopia could come unto the land for all the faithful.

But Lo .. no Utopia.

Then came unto the land, the Progressive Liberals. And they took up the cause to teach that Utopia is at hand. And their Anointed One ascended unto the White House.

But lo .. no Utopia. Only skyrocketing debt, taxes, and unemployment.

But lo .. the faithful, not to be discouraged, took time out to bit*ch about religion.

ChewyBees, why are you so full of hate? Christians Know that they are not free of sin and will never claim they are. It seems that you are way over excited by the mention of Heaven, something you don’t believe in and no one is trying to force you to believe. Of coarse if Islam takes over you will be forced to believe on pain of death and they have no problem killing a woman.

Now for the Constitution again there is no Article or Amendment declaring a separation of Church and State. There are no laws written anywhere that says there is to be a Separation of church and State. So get over it.
A street sign is not an attempt to shove religion down your throat. If you had a higher IQ you might be able to tell. God wants people to believe in him thru their own free will. I personally do not care what religion if any a person wants to follow, it’s their choice.
As for Taxpayer funds being spent I don’t see a problem since the majority of the taxes paid are paid by people who believe in some greater being. For those who question if the Firefighters believed in God. I say to them if they had not believed in God don’t you think their families would speak out. The last thing to those who thought they could have chosen a different street name. Why did you not get involved and make that suggestion when there were open meetings? It seems no one had a problem then.

Where does everybody get the idea that everyone who is an atheist is some kind of left-wing angry nut? I don’t believe in anything supernatural myself, but I don’t feel compelled to pester people who believe otherwise any time they want to say something nice about folks like the ones that these guys were honoring. True, I wouldn’t have chosen to do so exactly the way they did, but come on showing a little tolerance of good people oing good things shows just a little bit of class don’t you think? There are plenty of crazy things going on in the world whether by nutty atheists (like trying to turn the US into a socialist state) or nutty theists (like blowing up the World Trade Center, cutting off Dan Pearl’s head, or those jerks with the “God Hates Fags” signs at military funerals). The important difference between people is not whether they believe in supernatural beings but whether they are decent to one another. There are plenty of atheists that I wouldn’t be in the same room with, and plenty of theists who are my best friends. I don’t think that our most profound moral and philosophical beliefs are unimportant, but I don’t think that we should get carried away focusing on atheist/theist differences to the exclusion of the far more pressing and numerous differences like whether we should rob and kill one another which seems to be the more pressing issues of the day. I think that the good people of the country theist and atheist alike should be able to agree on those issues. No?

So there’s no way that you can discuss things with any atheist or just with the leftie nutcase ones? You are talking to an atheist right now (though not a leftist one) and we seem to be getting on just fine, no?

MrSubtle:
I can appreciate that you are not a left-winger, but sadly in my experience, which is considerable, most so-called atheists are left-wingers. Socialism does not allow for any god but the state; this fits in perfectly with what most atheists truly desire, and that is to be left alone about God. Unfortunately, most of the atheists misunderstand being left alone. Nowhere in any of our founding documents is there any guarantee of freedom FROM religion, only freedom of religion. I appreciate that you understand the socio-economic impact of socialism, and oppose it. That is wise. Unfortunately, your insistence on not believing in God will one day cost you more than you could ever calculate. I pray that in your travels you truly find the Lord’s handiwork, and He reveals Himself to you in such a way that you can no longer gainsay His existence. Though it likely means little to you to hear at this point, i will still say God bless and I am praying that God shows you the light before it is too late for you.

the ability to approach each topic individually seems to be a difficulty of many in this forum. everything has to be categorized, sanitized and labeled into very strict order and conformity to comfort those holding on so tight to their beliefs that they are strangling the truth out of what they had begun as – what the spirit of christianity in a pure state was meant to be…

the reasons our country came into being so long ago.

when folks declare that the majority of the country is christian – so therefore it is a christian nation and that majority must be honored and have the upper hand – does anyone not flashback to the pilgrims and recall the very reason they left their homeland – to avoid this very scenario…to find a place where they were not dictated by the masses (or king)…

every major (or minor) positive result that ever came about in our history was because a small group stood up and simply asked for equality – for the same respect and recognition the majority was given if by nothing other than default and ignorance of any other way of being.

i get the irony of both sides –

for the christians, if there is a heaven, what does a sign matter? of those 7 men – any who believed should be there, or not, based upon their relationship with their diety…just like i don’t understand why some evangalists are able to sucker their believers into supporting their lavish lifestyles – my understanding is that god meets you where ever you are – hell, chat while on the pot…

for an atheist and agnostic – it’s a street sign…there are more significant and worthy causes…

I think the charges of TREASON should come into play! We are sailing of a ship filed with rats! First they try to take our God given rights to the choice of how we say our pledge of allegiance, To be an Atheist is to be a trader to God and Country. Try cutting against the grain in China and you will die, Try doing that in the middle east and you will die, Only in America can you express your self. and if you don’t like the way we do things here in America. GET THE HELL OUT!!!!!

So let me get this straight. America is great because it is tolerant of people with different ideas and if you don’t agree with me you should get the hell out. Doesn’t the irony of that statement seem even a little odd to you?

I for one am an atheist and tolerant of other people whose ideas I think are wrong (and thus, I think that the guys of the “Hate America First” left as well as the rabid religionists are wrong, but I still think the have rights that deserve to be respected and protected, including the right to speak, protest, and say stupid and silly things. Does that make me a better American than you by your standards yrral1954?

Dear Atheists,
I’m so sorry that you have your panties in such a wad. That must be so uncomfortable for you. No worries, I’ll pray for your relief. I’m sure the “Seven in Heaven” are praying for you now as well. May our Almighty God Bless You & Yours!

To lm333… One day I sensed the Lord asking me if Jesus prayed for me in the Garden, the night of His betrayal. I went back and read the scriptures and this is what Jesus said… ” Father I thank you for those you have given me and for those who will come to me through their testimony.” After much thought, I knew that He had prayed for me that night because, I indeed, came to him through the testimony that had been passed down. So, since I don’t know whether or not He prayed for you that night, that you haven’t come to Him yet, but you might, I’ll not judge you. Instead I will pray for you. Father, I lift up lm333 and pray for salvation to come to the situations and circumstances that need salvation, including his or her soul. If he or she is one that Jesus did pray for but hasn’t received yet… I pray that someone’s testimony will cause her to really see who and what you are about. In Jesus’ name… Amen!!!

Only in America can you hear such a Pissing contest. We all know it to be true! Congress has to be rebuilt, That is to say remove the incumbents, If you are not no America’s side GET THE HELL OUT, WE DON’T NEED YOU or EVEN WANT YOU!!! IM333 You are in for a bumpy ride. You may not know it yet
but God IS REAL ! I hope things work out for you !

The “Separation” principle and the Supreme Court
Jefferson’s concept of “separation of church and state” first became a part of Establishment Clause jurisprudence in Reynolds v. U.S., 98 U.S. 145 (1878).[40] In that case, the court examined the history of religious liberty in the US, determining that while the constitution guarantees religious freedom, “The word ‘religion’ is not defined in the Constitution. We must go elsewhere, therefore, to ascertain its meaning, and nowhere more appropriately, we think, than to the history of the times in the midst of which the provision was adopted.” The court found that the leaders in advocating and formulating the constitutional guarantee of religious liberty were James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Quoting the “separation” paragraph from Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists, the court concluded that, “coming as this does from an acknowledged leader of the advocates of the measure, it may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the amendment thus secured.”
The centrality of the “separation” concept to the Religion Clauses of the Constitution was made explicit in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947), a case dealing with a New Jersey law that allowed government funds to pay for transportation of students to both public and Catholic schools. This was the first case in which the court applied the Establishment Clause to the laws of a state, having interpreted the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as applying the Bill of Rights to the states as well as the federal legislature. Citing Jefferson, the court concluded that “The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.”
While the decision (with four dissents) ultimately upheld the state law allowing the funding of transportation of students to religious schools, the majority opinion (by Justice Hugo Black) and the dissenting opinions (by Justice Wiley Blount Rutledge and Justice Robert H. Jackson) each explicitly stated that the Constitution has erected a “wall between church and state” or a “separation of Church from State”: their disagreement was limited to whether this case of state funding of transportation to religious schools breached that wall. Rutledge, on behalf of the four dissenting justices, took the position that the majority had indeed permitted a violation of the wall of separation in this case: “Neither so high nor so impregnable today as yesterday is the wall raised between church and state by Virginia’s great statute of religious freedom and the First Amendment, now made applicable to all the states by the Fourteenth.” Writing separately, Justice Jackson argued that “[T]here are no good grounds upon which to support the present legislation. In fact, the undertones of the opinion, advocating complete and uncompromising separation of Church from State, seem utterly discordant with its conclusion yielding support to their commingling in educational matters.”
In 1962, the Supreme Court addressed the issue of officially-sponsored prayer or religious recitations in public schools. In Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962), the Court, by a vote of 6-1, determined it unconstitutional for state officials to compose an official school prayer and require its recitation in public schools, even when the prayer is non-denominational and students may excuse themselves from participation. (The prayer required by the New York StateBoard of Regents prior to the Court’s decision consisted of: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country. Amen.”) As the Court stated:

The petitioners contend, among other things, that the state laws requiring or permitting use of the Regents’ prayer must be struck down as a violation of the Establishment Clause because that prayer was composed by governmental officials as a part of a governmental program to further religious beliefs. For this reason, petitioners argue, the State’s use of the Regents’ prayer in its public school system breaches the constitutional wall of separation between Church and State. We agree with that contention, since we think that the constitutional prohibition against laws respecting an establishment of religion must at least mean that, in this country, it is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers for any group of the American people to recite as a part of a religious program carried on by government.

The court noted that it “is a matter of history that this very practice of establishing governmentally composed prayers for religious services was one of the reasons which caused many of our early colonists to leave England and seek religious freedom in America.”[41] The lone dissenter, Justice Potter Stewart, objected to the court’s embrace of the “wall of separation” metaphor: “I think that the Court’s task, in this as in all areas of constitutional adjudication, is not responsibly aided by the uncritical invocation of metaphors like the “wall of separation,” a phrase nowhere to be found in the Constitution.”

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.[48]

Because Article VI, clause 2 of the United States Constitution renders ratified treaties “the supreme Law of the Land”, supporters of the separation of church and state believe the Treaty of Tripoli confirms that the government of the United States was specifically intended to be religiously neutral.

does this mean that the street sign is a big deal…nah…most religions have some version of heaven…Judaism, Islam, Buddism, most asian faiths, Swedenborg, Hindism, Jainism, Aztecs, Chichimecs and the Toltecs, Polynesia, Māori, just to name a few…so, at least the religious folks can be comforted by the fact that regardless of whatever those 7 men believed – they were covered

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.[48]

This is a somewhat scary declaration that, honestly, seems quite uncharacteristic of the Government of the time. I don’t doubt your homework. I’m just surprised to see it and intend to research it more when I get a chance.

The secularist leftists have a heaven too. They call it Utopia.
No one has ever seen Utopia. But they insist that it is awaiting the right moment to arrive. They have faith that it will arrive .. someday .. maybe soon.
It’s an irrational belief. But Utopians are free to assemble and believe in whatever irrationality pleases them.
I do have to wonder, though, how thay can dare accuse anyone else of being irrational.

——i have enjoyed the stereotyping within these postings. very telling…so, because someone does not believe in god, they must believe in some type of utopia? again, that is the religious folks transferring their need to believe that there is some perfect life (or afterlife) out there. i have not found that to be so in my experience with either agnostics nor atheists…

and atheists can only be leftist? where does it say that your political and religious – or lets just label it as spiritual – beliefs have to be one in the same? that is the problem, imo, with the political system. if you are republican or democrat you can only order from their ‘menus’ – no free or individual thinking or else you are shunned…

ps: no one has ever seen heaven either – yet billions of people seem to believe in it…so, if one group is a fool – by logical standards, so must the other.

Cloked1 several people have brought up the Treaty of Tripoli. There is one thing people miss this treaty was broken and became null and void in 1801 by the pasha of Tripoli. So the document is not valid any longer and honestly don’t think if they(the People) had the ability to know what was going on I don’t think they would have ratified it.
The politicians of then had little in common with the common man and did as they pleased. They were also the same bunch of cowards who outlawed guns in Washington D.C. because men marching with guns scared them. That action was directly the cause of British losses: 1,600 killed in action 3321 died from disease and American losses: 2260 killed in action, 15,000 died from disease.
What I’m getting at is these people signed this treaty not because it was the right thing to do but was signed because the politicians were afraid fight for what was right. Because of men willing to bow down and pay ransom I give little credence to words written therein.

OWM: Cloked1 several people have brought up the Treaty of Tripoli. There is one thing people miss this treaty was broken and became null and void in 1801 by the pasha of Tripoli. So the document is not valid any longer and honestly don’t think if they(the People) had the ability to know what was going on I don’t think they would have ratified it.

—-it was made null and void because the very thing you claim – that politicians of the time were more willing to pay than fight – is untrue…jefferson went for it when the other side broke the treaty…

as far as America being able to protect itself from the pirates at that point – since prior to that the British navy and then the French were doing such – after the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the wet behind the years US was on it’s own…to attempt to broker some level of peace considering the fact the US navy was hardly on equal footing with pirates who had been ‘in business’ for centuries seems like a reasonable move…and considering the battles going on right on their own US shores – you have to weigh pro and con…you can’t fight everyone everywhere with extremely limited and immature forces.

OWM: The politicians of then had little in common with the common man and did as they pleased. They were also the same bunch of cowards who outlawed guns in Washington D.C. because men marching with guns scared them.

—–??? seems it’s the same story now…(first sentence). when did the ‘bunch of cowards’ outlaw guns – are you talking then or now?

OWM: That action was directly the cause of British losses: 1,600 killed in action 3321 died from disease and American losses: 2260 killed in action, 15,000 died from disease.
What I’m getting at is these people signed this treaty not because it was the right thing to do but was signed because the politicians were afraid fight for what was right. Because of men willing to bow down and pay ransom I give little credence to words written therein. RE-ELECT OBAMA NOW! ! ! ! !

—–your logic doesn’t seem take into consideration historical fact, but rather just conservative, tea party rhetoric…

zellersgs, You must have missed that Thomas Jefferson was against this treaty and warned congress that it was a mistake. He also wanted to raise an army/navy to deal with the problem. So Jefferson didn’t just make a snap judgement. He knew that this would happen.
You need to read the debate on this subject. Jefferson is the one who called a ransom. Also like to point out that the American Colonist Beat an army of professional soldiers. Out gunned and little experience in war they won.

zellersgs, You must have missed that Thomas Jefferson was against this treaty and warned congress that it was a mistake. He also wanted to raise an army/navy to deal with the problem. So Jefferson didn’t just make a snap judgement. He knew that this would happen.
You need to read the debate on this subject. Jefferson is the one who called a ransom. Also like to point out that the American Colonist Beat an army of professional soldiers. Out gunned and little experience in war they won.

OBAMA FOREVER ! ! ! !

—true – but again, without the forces to defend reasonably, sometimes you make decisions which are timely – even if you have to go back and rectify them later. initially jefferson didn’t want to create a navy larger than would be needed to simply defend our immediate coast – and in that he also had to change his mind…

‘When Jefferson became president in 1801 he refused to accede to Tripoli’s demands for an immediate payment of $225,000 and an annual payment of $25,000. The pasha of Tripoli then declared war on the United States. Although as secretary of state and vice president he had opposed developing an American navy capable of anything more than coastal defense, President Jefferson dispatched a squadron of naval vessels to the Mediterranean.”

onewildman
Yeah, I’ve seen many of your posts with the Impeach Obama in them. I too wish it would happen, but it is not likely. When IM333 said the “idiot’ who posted above, I thought she was talking about me. His kind don’t bother me. I just feel sorry for them.

Ronald Reagan once said “”The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant: It’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” – Ronald Reagan

The rise of Atheism’s ugly head should not surprise us so very much. We are living in the last days before our Lord returns to reign in glory upon the earth. What troubles me is that so much of American society and, indeed, other societies as well, have drifted so far from Almighty God, that distinctions between right and wrong are often blurred or nonexistent. Now, we can either repent and turn our hearts back to God and His way of doing things, or we can continue our downward spiral until not a one of us is left standing, for God will not be mocked. Either way, we shall be brought to our knees.

Should governmental legislation/law and leadership be dictated by religion?

If so, who’s interpretation – and I think we can all agree that while it’s coming from basically the same source – the variety of interpretations are as numerous as the grains of sand on the beach…

Question:

Are non-christians, atheists and agnostics incapable of being good and moral people?

just a side note observation – seems that those in public service, who hold god up the highest and shout about him the loudest, have the greater difficulty in honoring his word…generally those who are honoring him most sincerely don’t need to verbally proclaim it in order to receive the attention of fellow worshippers – it should be clear in action and deed…

“In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter-bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”

—Stephen Crane

The gods offer no rewards for intellect. There was never one yet that showed any interest in it…
– Mark Twain’s Notebook

If God is what people say there can be no one in the universe so unhappy as He; for He sees unceasingly myriads of His creatures suffering unspeakable miseries–and besides this foresees how they are going to suffer during the remainder of their lives. One might as well say, “As unhappy as God.”
– Notebook #24, April – Aug. 1885

No man that has ever lived has done a thing to please God–primarily. It was done to please himself, then God next.
– Mark Twain, a Biography

Zeller:
You miss what is an obvious point. Virtually all of Western civilization’s most basic laws come from Judeo-Christian principles. Look at the laws today. You can’t steal…sounds like “Thou Shalt Not Steal” to me. You cannot commit perjury in court. Where does that come from if not from “Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness?” Polygamy is outlawed. ‘Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery” seems to fit here. Murder is a capital punishment offense. “Thou Shalt Not Murder” sound familiar? What do they all have in common? Oh, that’s right…they’re all part of the Ten Commandments that Moses received from God on Mount Sinai. You may certainly choose not to believe in God; that is your right, though as with all choices it has consequences. However, to try to separate religion, or more specifically the Judeo-Christian religion from the laws of the land simply doesn’t work. As for your query regarding “good and moral people”, how would you judge that if you’ve no yardstick to determine what is and isn’t moral? Who would then determine what is and isn’t moral? You are arguing that those who do not believe in God can be moral when without that God there is no set standard of what morality is in the first place. You can’t have it both ways; our basic determinations of morality are based on Judeo-Christian principles. Without those principles, you have no working construct of morality in principle, and no standard to measure it against in fact.

Rich Money: I hear people saying that all of our laws come from Judeo-Christian principles all the time and while it’s certainly true that the bulk of the people who wrote them were Christians of one sort or another, you are really missing the mark on this analysis:

1. Laws against murder, theft, lying, etc. are nearly universal. These things were against the law a long time before Judaism and Christianity ever came along and they have generally been outlawed in more modern non-Christian societies too. Don’t get me wrong, I think that laws against theft, murder, fraud, etc. are great. I just don’t think that you can remotely make the case that the only way to justify them is wither religion in general or Christian religion in particular.

2. Our laws against polygamy have nothing to do with the ten commandments forbidding adultery. Polygamy was common before and after the Ten Commandments and the Bible to my knowledge never says one harsh word about the practice despite mentioning that polygamy was very commonplace even among those God loved best (like David and Solomon for example).

Regarding moral standards, you are assuming that the only way to have a standard against which to judge a choice is for that standard to come from some supernatural source. That is obviously false for several reasons. One is that you have no way of knowing anything at all about anything supernatural in the first place. Faith is merely an alternative to thinking and just means digging in your heels on an issue for lack of any good evidence or argument. It doesn’t tell you anything at all about what is true.

Another one is that even if you did know something about something supernatural that wouldn’t tell you anything about how you should behave. How would you know whether it would be better for you to think for yourself instead of parroting the beliefs of supernatural beings? How would you know which supernatural being to agree with without some kind of meta-ethical theory?

Most importantly though, there are ways to figure out right choices compared with wrong ones just by looking at the facts and the implications of your choices. Let’s say I want to build a car. There are right ways of doing it and wrong ways. Round wheels? Right. Square wheels? Wrong. Gas in the gas tank? Right. Gas in the passenger compartment? Wrong. One need not know anything about supernatural beings to make such choices, nor would the commandment from a supernatural being that “Square wheels are right and round ones are wrong.” make it so. They would still be wrong even if supernatural beings proclaimed it to be so. When it comes to making a good life, there are things that are consistent with it (health, learning, liberty, friends, money, rationality, security, tools, shelter, food, etc.) and there are things that are inconsistent with it such as poverty, violence, loneliness, oppression, laziness, dishonesty, etc. These things can be seen without any need for religion or supernatural messages from beyond. I can look out at the way the world works and see that living a life of honest, peaceful cooperation with my fellow man, hard work, achievement, and so on are beneficial to me and you can count on me to behave that way as consistently as any Christian. My point in explaining this is not an attempt to convert you to my way of thinking since no little message like this can accomplish that, it’s to show you that whoever is right about the ultimate nature of morality, you can expect good behavior from plenty of people who don’t believe in your religion because we abide by principles too. They may be different principles, but they bind us to not do nasty things to other people just like yours do and just like the principles of various other religious groups. Your way of thinking isn’t the only way that people conclude that we should not lie, cheat, steal, and murder people or engage in other kinds of vicious behavior.

Mr S.
I don’t know if you realize this, but you’ve just made my argument for me. The fact is this; if men were truly capable of being good and moral on their own, laws would be completely unnecessary. If each of us possesses the ability to make sound moral judgments absent an absolute standard, then we have no need for an absolute standard in the first place. However, all you have to do is watch people in crisis. Looting, rioting, clashes with police and authority; none of these behaviors evidence people who are making good moral judgments and sound decisions. In Vancouver after their hockey team lost game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals, there was rioting and destruction. In Los Angeles last year after the Lakers won the NBA Finals, there was looting, pillaging and general mayhem. This wasn’t exactly a bunch of people starving to death. They were rioting over the outcome of a SPORTING event. Where was their sound moral judgment and ability to make good decisions there? Old women are beaten and raped by teenage boys just because they can. Children are dropped from third floor windows because a bigger kid wants their sneakers. None of these behaviors is rare, nor do any of these behaviors indicate an ability to make sound moral judgments. Your entire hypothesis proceeds from a flawed premise; and that is that man is inherently good. Unfortunately, history has demonstrated time and again that man is anything but inherently good. You can see this in children. You do not need to teach a child to lie; they know that instinctively. You don’t have to teach them to steal, or to covet. Those behaviors come naturally. You must discipline them out of the child. If mankind’s nature was inherently good, then it logically follows that you wouldn’t have to discipline them to do good. It would just come naturally.
See, another thing you said gives weight to the belief that they are Judeo-Christian principles. Several different civilizations all settled on basically the same laws, yet those exact laws were needed to keep people from indulging their basest natures. Therefore, it cannot be mankind’s inherently good nature that led them to these laws, for if that was it the laws themselves would be superfluous. Therefore, they must have all derived these laws from a single standard, which could be easily accounted for by the fact that according to Scripture all men lived together until the fall at the tower of Babel. The standard set by God at Mount Sinai was based on His understanding of our fallen nature, and the specific laws that would be necessary to protect us from ourselves. The fact that virtually every civilization adopted some variant of those original Mosaic laws gives great weight to the thought that those laws proceeded from that standard.

Cloaked1, Do you know the circumstances this was treaty written? So you know oue merchant ships were being attacked by the by Muslim pirates. They were killing our people and enslaving them. In order to stop this the coward politician came up with this and payed ransom to allow our ships to pass freely. Thomas Jefferson was against this treaty and warned them that they would keep asking for more and that they did.

Thomas Jefferson wanted to raise a navy and army and take the fight to them. That didn’t happen until Jefferson was elected President at which time he sent our newly formed Navy and Marines to bomb and fight them into submission.

Some of these same coward politicians outlawed guns in Washington D.C. because the sight of the men marching in parade with their guns scared. This in turn led to the war of 1812. The British saw the gun ban as both foolish and an opportunity to attack Washington D.C.

Rich Money: I never said that people were inherently good, nor did I say that knowledge of the good was automatic or universal (though some here on the religious side have said something to that effect when they claimed something to the effect that “For an atheist to claim to know what is good is only possible because they have some kind of innate understanding of the good that comes from God.”). I furthermore have not claimed that knowing what is good one must therefore act in accordance with the good (as Plato claimed was the case). What I said was that it was possible for people to come to know what the good is by use of evidence and reason. That doesn’t mean that everybody does do so any more than my claim that it is possible to know the answer to the question “What is 6352/765?” means that everybody necessarily will take the steps necessary to learn the answer. Furthermore, knowing that answer doesn’t mean that everyone who knows it will necessarily act on it (though they may…that’s what free will is all about).

I believe that it is possible to know what is good and bad. I believe that it is possible to act in good ways as a result of that knowledge too. I also know that doing all of this takes effort and willpower and that not everyone does so, thus we need armies, police, courts, jails, and the like. We definitely need those things in order to deal with these problems, but we don’t need the supernatural to explain them nor to deal with them when they do crop up

Regarding your examples of riots, murders, etc. Does it escape your notice that most of the people involved in all of those events were at least nominally Christians? That they have spent time in some kind of religious instruction that told them that God has declared that theft, murder, etc. are all wrong, but yet they somehow committed those crimes anyway?

This brings up a question that has always puzzled me about the moral thinking of religious folks and perhaps you can share your point of view on this. Let’s suppose that I could provide for you absolute proof that you would accept that there is not now nor has there ever been a God or anything in any way supernatural. Are you seriously telling me that you couldn’t think of a single reason not to instantly go on a rampage murdering everyone you see, stealing their stuff, raping any attractive women you might stumble upon, and generally just laying waste to all you survey? I’m not asking whether those reasons would seem as compelling to you as you think the religious justifications that you actually hold are, but I’m just wondering whether you can imagine thinking that there were even weak, limited, or uncertain reasons not to go on a rampage like I described. Say, things like fear of retaliation, avoidance of risks, the unpleasantness of all of that blood, loss of friends, self-doubt regarding the wisdom of others ever trusting you again, etc. I think those are all good reasons (and there are many more) not to go on a rampage. Do you really disagree with me on those justifications for being a nice guy?

The truth is that laws against theft, murder, etc. don’t really change my behavior at all (much like the drug laws). Even if murder were legal I would not want to do it anyway. I do like those laws because they protect me in the even that I encounter someone who thinks differently about murder.

Regarding your comment that all men lived according to some particular scripture until the fall of Babel (a tower that threatened to reach heaven? Really?), are you claiming that there were no ancient people before that who were not proto-Judeo-Christians? What about the American Indians? What about the Australian Aborigines? What about all of the other early civilizations that apparently had no links to these people?

Regarding the general question of the inherent goodness or evil of mankind, I don’t accept either of those positions. I think that we are “inherently” free to choose either way. There’s very little that we do as human beings that is natural and beyond our conscious control other than purely biological things like digesting food, breathing when we are asleep, etc. Pretty much everything else we do we do because we choose it. That goes for walking, talking, eating, reading, buying, selling, robbery, nurturing, killing, mowing the lawn, or rioting at a Lakers game. What matters is not some kind of innate (or supernatural) drive, but our own choice, our own free will. That’s the origin of all of these things for better or worse.

Cloaked1: You are right about Jefferson and the Barbary pirates. One of the best books I have read in years by the way is “Six Frigates” by Ian Toll and it recounts the story of those first six ships in the American Navy, why and how they were built, and what they did. It’s quite a heroic tale and despite being non-fiction it’s a much a page turner as any thriller written today. I highly recommend it.

mrsubtle says: Regarding the general question of the inherent goodness or evil of mankind, I don’t accept either of those positions. I think that we are “inherently” free to choose either way. There’s very little that we do as human beings that is natural and beyond our conscious control other than purely biological things like digesting food, breathing when we are asleep, etc. Pretty much everything else we do we do because we choose it. That goes for walking, talking, eating, reading, buying, selling, robbery, nurturing, killing, mowing the lawn, or rioting at a Lakers game. What matters is not some kind of innate (or supernatural) drive, but our own choice, our own free will. That’s the origin of all of these things for better or worse.

——what i think gets lost in these debates, in each persons instinctual desire to defend and protect themselves and their belief system, is that no matter who you are, what you believe in – there are examples of the most devout doing both good and evil – because of what they have ‘heard’ from their god or deity, how they have interpreted the gospel of that spiritual leader. to attempt to lay more evil at the feet of one group or another to support ‘your’ (generalized) opinion is myopic to the reality of the nature of human beings. there will always be examples of the most god-fearing and seemingly devoutly religious person doing something horrific – in the name of their god and then there will be the atheist/agnostic who is responsible for great goods and such. if we are being honest to the bottom of our souls – we will all admit that no group is completely good, completely evil or worthy of total blind devotion or total fear…

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. ~Buddha

My country is the world, and my religion is to do good. ~Thomas Paine

If moral behavior were simply following rules, we could program a computer to be moral. ~Samuel P. Ginder

The Atheist are masters of deception but don’t get it. It’s not about religion or even you as a person. It’s about every one being entitled to pursue their interests unimpeded by an organization like the communist party or atheist party. Do you Get it now ! OK
( WE THE PEOPLE ) not a few but the majority.
To you mrsubtle The answer you are looking for is when in Rome do as the Romans do because that is the rules of that Country. THE USA is one Nation Under God. regardless of what group or person says. In short you are trying to impose your ideas on others. That isn’t what we the people are about.

although this will fall on deaf ears – there is a distinction to be made…while the country may have been founded by christians – that does not make it a ‘christian’ nation…the laws are written and enforced in a neutral manner – or at least supposed to be…if it was a completely christian nation – why would there be such a debate about it? why would it have not been clearly outlined in the founding documents that we are to abide by the laws of the christian god?

as to your last two sentences – the irony in that has me peeing my pants from laughing so hard!